Interacting with finance & numbers

it's been a week full of driving ... plenty of time to mull things over. b'tween got me thinking that there are two key elements of MyCake that I want to find the time, space (and cash) to work on:
- community ... how we set up a trusted community that users will share, ask questions with etc
- interaction design ... how to design good interactions with numbers

Community:
to date the typical stance on numbers is that they are not to be shared and indeed are to be protected. whilst i agree that confidentiality and security are crucial to establishing a trusted site the goal as I see it is to establish an atmosphere where users choose to share their insight, questions and challenges with other users. this may lead to mentoring, shared resources .. who knows.

Interaction design:
we've already seen that the benchmarking reporting we've designed is far preferable to the typical tables and lists of numbers.
this visualisation of finances is a key part of our usp and one that needs developing throughout the site. it could be a dashboard on the landing page with drag and drop widgets. it could be colour coding of thermometers ... the key is to find a way to research what visualisation tools work in this environment.